Ms Aisling Moran:

There is local need. People are going for planning permission. There are environmental issues. Many islands are now in special areas of conservation, SACs, and there are many environmental reports which drive up the price of planning. I know of properties close to each other on one island, one of which had to get an environmental report and one of which had to get an archaeological report. Each such report costs no less than €1,500. One of the reports was done in March and they were told they had to do it in bloom in May. These things do not get stated beforehand so if you want to build, the timeline is that all the environmental reports have to be done in May. This is a nuance to that particular island.

When we look at local need, an adult member of a family of four had lived in England and stated that he owned a house there, so he was told he had no local need even though he had been living on the island for the last eight years and had returned home to work in and be in the area. He had to sell the house he had in England to make sure he could prove local need. That increased cost and delayed the process when logic would tell us there was a local need. His kids were in school there, he was an islander by birth, had come back to live on the island and did not realise this would be an obstacle. People are going for planning and there are many nuances and costs incurred. One of the fine balances is we all want to protect the environment but if there are no people living on it, we will have wilderness. We have to find the fine balance between protecting the environment of the islands as special places to live and ensuring people can build on the islands in a respectful manner.